Hi All After being away from the hobby for 20ish years life is allowing me the time , space and resources to get back in. Digitraxx was in its infancy when I had to take my "break". Now I am building a freelance PRR HO layout in 2 levels in a 13.5ft x 14ft room. As I was about to pull the trigger on Digitrax I ran across DCC++ and must say the work done is amazing. I have some OLD microcontroller experience using PIC controllers for some automotive projects. What I am hoping to achieve is a DCC++ base station with basic 10A+ operational power, LCD display showing power usage. Will be using JMRI on a small Windows 10 laptop I have laying around. From what I have read my path of least resistance is to build a basic DCC++ system using a real UNO and motor shield then piggyback Daves booster off the operational track output of the basic DCC++ comand station.?.? Any thoughts, feedback , ideas are welcome. Thankyou for your time and efforts.
that is the basic plan i have, to use an Arduino motor shield (or *compatible* generic equivalent), and make a booster based on Dave's design. i had originally used a large motor driver right off the DCC++ base station, but found it's limitations quickly. i know the version of DCC++ i have was heavily modified by Atani and myself, based on a prototype i made a while back for multi-district use, with an auto-reset electronic breaker. i currently do not recommend the version of DCC++ on my GitHub, as i really need to clean it up a lot, and haven't gotten to that yet. more of a hodge-podge of spaghetti code. i think there are several variations of DCC++ out there with bits and pieces of my multi-district code splashed in here and there, that are more stable than my copy. I think my version is the only version making use of my MCP23017 library, that allows the replacement of the Arduino I/O pins for sensor input, and light/turnout output, with the I/O pins from several MCP23017 (I/O expander, via I2C) chips. i have been away from the forum for a while, due to trying to establish space to finally setup a layout, and the many problems/issues entailed therein, but i , along with the many users here, will be glad to help where we can. welcome back to the hobby! ~Travis
I also returned this past year and decided on DCC++ after being pointed in that direction. Here is a link to what I found to put the above together which I've been real happy with.... http://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/DCC/page-1.html ...... At this point I've stuck with a standard DCC++ approach to make sure I'm dealing with a proven setup. That link will point you to all the links that I used and it was a pretty painless route to take and seems to work with no glitches. For the first build I've stayed with genuine parts, paying a little more but hopefully eliminating any odd ball stuff and everything worked first time. I got most of the parts to build Dave's booster and wireless throttles but since I'm old and time is limited building turnouts, installing decoders and the dozen's of other things the hobby offers have changed course and recently bought some of Tam Valleys boosters and circuit breaker. The boosters at 5 amps might not be what you are looking for but spread over different districts might work just fine. That is what I'm doing. The circuit breaker will work with 10 amp boosters according to their site. Both have been very reasonably priced from the online supplier I've used and seem to be proven products. I've also bought some of their frog juicers to use with reversing loops. I haven't installed any of those products to this point but since I'm almost done building turnouts hope to soon. I decided to stay with one manufacture in case I run into a problem. It would be easier to troubleshoot a problem if I ran into one, not that I'm expecting one. I still hope to build a couple of Dave's wireless throttles with the parts I bought but the phone app on my android phone is working well as a wireless throttle for now. Welcome back and have fun, Sumner
well... there just isn't any fun in everything working first time out. i think my first base station was using a Arduino Mega2560, and other "odd ball" components. really, it depends on each person, and why they want to use DCC++. i have always liked model trains, since discovering my fathers set, stored in a trunk in the basement. i think i was around 10 or 12. i managed to "acquire" enough pieces to setup a circle on my bedroom floor, until i got caught... but it was too late, as it was in my blood, but outside of my budget. as i am a electronics and computer programming hobbyist, getting into model trains, it was almost natural for me to attach to the DCC++ project. and being an "odd ball" myself, my direction here followed suit. though as i get closer to finally building my layout, i am more apt to settle down, and take a slightly more proven approach. and a note toward the post above, as i have a Raspberry Pi 4B4, i may even opt to using it for JMRI in the near future. ~Travis
Thanks for the input guys. The reason for the 10a isnt so much for power districting but I am a bit sedomasacistic and enjoy building old penn line and bowser steam which when double amd tripple headed can draw ALOT of power. So at any one time I may have 6 to 7 engines going on my double main plus one or two switching. I too was hooked at a young age. I also plan to pay for genuine parts to hopefully increase chances of sucess and longevity. I order a uno and motor shield as well as a 18v 20a supply, eventually I see buying a 1 to 2 amp step down converter to power the arduions. I was also thinking of buying or building the equivelent of the digitraxx block circuit breakers. Somewhere way down the road I may look into block detection and automatic signals, but expect to stay ground throws on my peco turnouts. Travis, again, thank you for all your work....
really, Gregg, Dave, Atani, and a few others came well before i did. they assuredly deserve as much, if not more appreciation. but i humbly accept appreciation for their major contributions, on their behalf. Atani still contributes here, and i saw a post of his a little while ago. Dave (http://www.trainelectronics.com/miscellaneous_projects.htm) i think has slowed down contributions. probably just semi-retired from here. Gregg, the original maker... i don't think i have ever seen a new post of his while here. i hope all is well with him... ~Travis
As we are all aware life can throw stuff at us that forces our priorities to change, hopefully it isnt anything major in Greggs case. Speaking of Atani I am also researching his EPS32 system, if I am getting it right looks like a "Lego Set" system which would be awesome. I know I an always take the basic uno/shield setup and use it for bench testing and wor and move to something more advanced in the future.
Travis, I have also done alot of research before starting my benchwork and figured I might as well share my experiences so far before you start your own. I am using a combination of xps and 3/4 ply for sub road bed depending on location. For the penisula I am using 2 1/2in layers glued together with offset seams to create a base 8ft x 12ft sheet that I then cookie cut for elevations. I used gorrila construction adhesive at the sheet edges and a very generous coat of PPG gripper primer between the sheets to laminate them together. The PPG gripper is a very thick latex primer avalible at home depot and make a great glue for xps, foam, wood. I am also using a foam roadbed. I looked at woodland scenics but do not like the density of the foam they use. I found this product on ebay, it is much higher density and less than a third the cost of cork. I work a direct deal with him for 300ft for $120 shipped. It easily goes down using the PPG gripper and T pins and is solid in 24hrs. I will then use Liquid Nails Fuze It to attach the track. The Fuze It product is grey out of the tube..... Good luck on your layout.
Well, so today I started getting my dcc++ up and running, pulled down the lattest release from the site and am unable to get the led on the board to turn off, but can get the lights to work on the motor shield.?.? Also <D> would not work with the release code, but does with master 2.?.? During compilinging with both codes I get various syntax errors in the current monitor routines, is this normal? I am running real UNO R3 and Motor Shield, not knock offs. Where can I find the most reliable code?
Also if I ground pin 13 the led does turn off. But is not controllable thru <0> , wondering if my uno is missing pull down resistors on the IO pins.
I used the following to setup my DCC++ last year and it has worked fine, but I'm just running trains and programming decoders with JMRI. Looking this morning at the link it looks like the files to download are maybe 4 years old so should be the ones I downloaded which work for me using a real uno and motor shield... https://github.com/DccPlusPlus/BaseStation/wiki/Getting-Started-With-DCC---Hardware Sumner
Thanks Summer Downloaded the original code and have <D> flashing the lights on the motor shield. JMRI is up and able to turn power on and off for the tracks. I have setup a simple test station with 2 leds and a can motor, but can not get JMRI to talk to eaither of the new DH126 decoders I have. Track is showing good 15.5v AC, 7ish khz switching and 51% duty cycle. I have tried to identify the decoder with it erroring out saying no response. Created a throttle with address set to 3 as these are brand new decoders, but again no response from the decoders. Any ideas are appriciated.
Well, got things up and running, there were several bad solider joints on the Arduino motor shield I got so I ended up going over the entire board and everything came to life. I now have a packaged system up and running in a extruded aluminum case with a 15V 20A ac/dc power supply, a 5V buck converter to power the uno, a 80mm fan , the uno and shield and a IBT2 sield running the main tuned for 8A cutout. I run heavy bowser steam which can draw up to 1A each engine so I had to go to the IBT2 shield for the operating track. Next on the agenda will be to break things apart into 4 districts and add 2 auto reversers. So I am now looking for input on what is out there now. I am leaning towards using Tam Valley dual frog juciers for the reverse loops and dc specialties breakers to seperate the power districts.
If you're up to a little bit of fiddling there is one using a ATtiny. Search for "Cheap and universal Automatic Bidirectional Reversing Loop controller" on RMweb and "DCC++ and auto-reverse question" in this forum. First one has good examples of where loops can be found on layouts and how to set it up for auto reverse. Only 3 triggers and its your choice of what triggers you want to use.
I am looking for "shorting" detection. I was looking at the merge ARC, but by the time I get the pic programmer and parts it started to get close in cost to just buying Digitrax AR1. If I was better at C programming I would also look at adding a couple more IBT2 shields and invert the dcc driving signal when a short is detected.
OK, if you program in Arduino, work already done. On Trainelectronics search either for "A High Power DCC Booster" and or "My Experiments with DCC++". D. Bodnar's work on IBT2 shield and where necessary Arduino code included using Arduino Mini Pro.
no, Daves high power booster does not incorporate a reverser ... however you can add that to the code ?
